Quotes About Athletics

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting.

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact.

When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team.

The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. Athletics don't make anybody long-lived or useful.

I had pro offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, who were pretty hard up for linemen in those days. If I had gone into professional football the name Jerry Ford might have been a household word today.

The champ may have lost his stuff temporarily or permanently, he can't be sure. When he can no longer throw his high hard one, he throws his heart instead. He throws something. He just doesn't walk off the mound and weep.

It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square.

You can't think and hit at the same time.

International sport is war without shooting.

Trying to get a fast ball past Hank Aaron is like trying to get the sun past a rooster.

Citius, altius, fortius. (Swifter, higher, stronger.)

It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports. What's tough is being good every day.

A couple of times a day I sit quietly and visualize my body fighting the AIDS virus. It's the same as me sitting and seeing myself hit the perfect serve. I did that often when I was an athlete.

I want to play football for as long as my body will let me, and for as long as I can do a good job at it. And I want a wife. A son. Maybe another kid.

Yeah. Rough game, though. You get banged up?

I feel like there was maybe a 1 percent chance that you get twin brothers on the same team.

Our first thought growing up was that we want to be together always so we didn't want to play the same position. You see a lot of twins play the same position because they are so alike. That was a big thing for us that we taught ourselves, and luckily it ended up paying off.

When I played against Joe Cole, if I was ever less than 100 per cent I'd know about it because he can twist and turn you inside out.

They're like, 'Oh, you did a...' and I'm like, 'I did a what?' No, I flipped twice. I twisted twice. They go, 'It's called a...' and I'm like, 'Why do I need to know that? I just need to go and do that.'

I used to play a lot of tennis and then, next thing you know, same thing with tennis. That banging on the knees, the jarring, twisting motion - I couldn't do it. All of a sudden, every time I played, my knee would swell up.

We do a lot of twisting and turning in our training. Those types of moves really help get the body moving and make sure we're staying agile, which is so important in the ring.

As you know, I get a lot of abuse on Twitter. And while I'm abroad on training camp, I train three times a day, often for two hours a time, and I haven't got time to respond to all the people that ask questions.

I don't look at Twitter between events because it's a distraction but I will ring my fiance and parents to let them know how it's going.